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Blogging Blues – Slump or just needing time to re-group?

I’m a person with big ideas… I had hoped to finish a set of illustrations and devotions for a 6-12 day mini-Advent series for children and parents to read together and post them here and/or on my Bible Quilts blog. But Christmas isn’t the time of year to try to accomplish such a major project. I completed only two of the quilt blocks so far, the second completed the day after Christmas.

Around the first of November I accepted the responsibility of directing a church choir. I’m not highly skilled, nor am I a great musical performer, but I know I have sufficient musical skills to help the choir to move to a higher level than they are at present. I am thoroughly enjoying this opportunity to minister.

Over the past three and a half weeks I’ve experienced various levels of back pain, enough to send me to a chiropractor as well as an orthopaedic specialist who signed me up for physical therapy. It seems one of my back’s worst enemies is my computer. I’m spending too many hours a day in front of my computer screen. It doesn’t help that I read at a turtle’s pace and am easily distracted.

Meanwhile I’ve written very few blog posts, most of which went on two other blogs I share with Christian children’s authors. I manage both of these blogs.

I can look at all of the above and call them excuses for myself. Or I can assess the expectations I put on myself and prayerfully consider which of these are God-assignments and which are of my own making.

As a book publisher and author, I have the responsibility of promoting my own books. I find this very difficult, especially considering I live in a very small town with no bookstores to carry and promote my books. Much of my computer time is spent on Facebook and elsewhere looking for ways to network and to promote my books – something that seems to keep me going in circles… It is very difficult… dare I say impossible to wear all the hats of writing, illustrating, publishing, and marketing my own books. On top of that, every time I think of doing my taxes, my stomach seems to get tied up in knots. My pockets are too shallow to hire people to bear part of this load, but somewhere something has to give!

I am also praying over what kinds of articles are most appropriate for my blogs. My passion is for young families to discover what a great resource we have in the Bible as a guide for daily living, and to recognize the critical need children have for affirmation and support from their parents, grandparents, and others around them.

I’m not exactly an authority on family living so I feel underqualified to write extensively on that topic. I’m leaning toward writing about Bible stories suitable for sharing with children and offering ways to apply them to daily living.

How have other authors found balance in their lives when they wear so many hats? I hope I will find some helpful words of encouragement from my readers in the comments below. Meanwhile, please pray with me for direction in my life and on my blogs.

About Janice D. Green

Janice D. Green retired as an elementary librarian to write books. She is author, illustrator, and publisher of The Creation, and The First Christmas, Bible storybooks for children. The colorful illustrations in The Creation are hand appliqued fabric pictures that have been put together to make a Bible quilt. The First Christmas, is illustrated by Violet Vandor. Janice's passion is to write about the Bible in a way that encourages people to want to know more and to read it for themselves. www.honeycombadventures.com www.biblequilts.com.